Robot Vacuums Hacked To Shout Slurs At Their Owners

Ecovacs robot vacuums have been hacked across the U.S. to shout racial slurs at unsuspecting people. VICE News reports: The issue is specifically with Ecovacs' Deebot X2 model. The hackers gained control of the devices and used the onboard speakers to blast racial slurs at anyone within earshot. One such person was a lawyer from Minnesota named Daniel Swenson. He was watching TV when he heard some odd noises coming from the direction of his vacuum. He changed the password and restarted it. But then the odd sounds started up again. And then it started shouting racial slurs at him like a surly disgruntled maid.

There were multiple reports of similar incidents across the United States and around the same time. One of them happened in Los Angeles, where a vacuum chased a dog while spewing hate. Another happened in El Paso, where the vac spewed slurs until it's owner turned it off. The attacks are apparently quite easy to pull off thanks to several known security vulnerabilities in Ecovacs, like a bad Bluetooth connector and a defective PIN system that is intended to safeguard video feeds and remote access but actually doesn't do any of that at all. A pair of cybersecurity researchers released a report on Ecovacs detailing the brand's multiple security flaws earlier this year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.